Bonsai

Watching bonsai trees grow and forming them into amazing sculptures is an absorbing and very rewarding pastime. Growing bonsai trees is not an expensive pastime with few specialist tools being required, but a beautiful bonsai tree can be much more of a centrepiece in your home than many ornaments can. A bonsai is a living sculpture.

Bonsai are pot planted plants or trees that are developed to be small versions of its full sized tree. Bonsai trees can be grown from nearly any perennial wood stemmed trees or shrubs that produce branches and can grow in miniature through pot confinement with the aid of root and crown pruning.

A Bonsai tree can be grown from seeds, from young shoots lifted from the wild, (please observe any laws in respect of taking wild plants or trees in your area), or can be purchased as mature planted bonsai. Obviously growing bonsai trees from seed is the slowest route, but you do have maximum control of how your bonsai tree will grow.

Bonsai trees are planted in containers that restrict the development of the roots but will also enhance the beauty of your bonsai. Special soil mixtures are available that give you the perfect conditions for your bonsai to develop.

Many specialist techniques are used to sculpt and give character to your bonsai tree including leaf trimming, wiring, grafting on other plants, dwarfing and deadwood, (a method of aging bark). Only a few special tools are required to sculpt bonsai trees, and these are readily available very cheaply. Everything you require to get started can easily be purchased from a specialist bonsai nursery.

Bonsai are available as both indoor and outdoor varieties, many bonsai trees are improved if they are left outdoors during summer months and then grown inside in the winter.

For those that like the idea, but does not want to maintain bonsai, you can even buy artificial bonsai trees.

If you wonder if growing bonsai is for you, I say have a go, bonsai are simple to grow, and take very little of your spare time, each and every bonsai is individual, and who does not admire a bonsai every time they see one.